Today's Bridge: I think the opponents had the balance of power - we did pretty well giving up a couple of 500s when they had at least one great shot at a slam. I'm not sure about one hand where I ended up declaring 3H with S K-Q-J-10-9-3 H J-x-x-x D A-x C 8 facing H A-Q-x-x D x-x-x-x C Q-10-x-x-x - Ken took my double of 2S as a desire to play rather than defend, and it's possible that I played badly, but I really don't see how I could have improved. It was a given that most of the power and most of the spades were to my right, so after losing the jack of clubs on the opening lead and taking the diamond return, I cashed two spades, throwing diamonds from dummy. Dan C. took the second spade and cashed a diamond trick before it could run away, then led a club that I had to ruff. The jack of hearts drew his king, and he led another club, which I had to ruff again. With no further entry to the spades, I could only cash one more, which held, and then I think I got overruffed somewhere along the way for the set. More interesting, though, was when Dan H. opened 1H, Ken overcalled 2C, and with S x-x H K-J-x-x-x D A-Q-x-x C Q-J, I bid 2D, skipping the obviously dead heart suit. Ken rebid 3C, and I bid 3H, hoping he could bid spades and let me declare notrump, or perhaps declare notrump himself with a good spade stopper and just deal with a lead through my hearts. Instead, he passed, giving me S Q-x-x H 10-x-x D x C A-K-10-x-x-x to make a contract with a known 5-0 trump split. I figured it was Ken's revenge for jumping in clubs the previous hand, intending it to be a pre-empt, when I was weak but long in the suit - he took it as strong and bid a game that was probably a worthy sacrifice, but was right on the edge of being worth the cost. (Admittedly, clubs are the superior suit given the known split in hearts, but we lose two spades and two hearts on our way to setting up a heart trick for our ninth, and if the king of diamonds is offside, we lose either that or a third spade, if not both. The opponents can easily prevent a spade ruff by leading trump twice, so there's no seventh club trick available either, and the threat of heart ruffs also makes attempting that dangerous.) The opening lead was a diamond to my queen, and knowing the trump layout exactly, I cashed my two clubs, ruffed a diamond, and ran the ace of clubs, throwing one of my spades. Dan H. ruffed in and cashed a spade, then led another to the queen, king, and my ruff. I led the ace of diamonds, which he ruffed with the queen while I threw the last spade from dummy. He led another spade (probably not wanting to pull trump for some reason), so I ruffed in hand and led my last diamond - Dan threw off a spade, and I ruffed low. That left the ten of hearts in dummy and the K-J-x in my hand to deal with his A-9-8, giving him only the ace for his fourth trick and nine for us. Had Dan pulled trump while in with the queen, I'd have ended up with a losing diamond - my mistake for leading the ace early instead of the low diamond, but I was hoping for a better split and didn't want to have to ruff twice.

The doctor visit this morning went very well. He confirmed that my numbers are doing well and told me to go ahead and cut back on my Metformin dosage as well as my glucose monitoring frequency - I'm keeping things stable enough that I don't need to measure every day, which is getting expensive even by my standards. Then I went to work, where I spent very little time working on the effort from last week because I had a few more things to research. I'm hoping to have some answers to those questions tomorrow. I made a quick dinner because I'm hoping to be able to record some Gobliins 2 tonight, but no word yet from my guest, and I can't do it without him. Hopefully, that will be soon.

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Yes, I'm THAT Nidoking. Sometimes I write fanfiction... often I waste all my time playing video games and watching anime. But it's not a waste if I enjoy it, right? I can quote from a movie, video game, anime series, or British comedy apropos of just about any situation, and one of my main goals in life is to entertain people. (The other big one is amassing as much anime and manga as I can... see below for a progress report.) That's me in a nutshell. ("Help! I'm trapped in a nutshell! What a bloody great nutshell this is!")